Personal Life
Yelchin was born on March 11, 1989 in Leningrad, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union (modern day Saint Petersburg, Russia). His family is Jewish. His parents, Irina Korina and Viktor Yelchin, were pair figure skaters who were celebrities as stars of the Leningrad Ice Ballet for 15 years. Nationally, Yelchin's parents were the third-ranked pair team; they thus qualified for the 1972 Winter Olympics, but were not permitted to participate by the Soviet authorities (Yelchin has said the reason was unclear: "I don't exactly know what that was–because they were Jewish or because the KGB didn't want them to travel"). Yelchin's family moved to the United States in September 1989, receiving status as refugees from political oppression. As of 2007, Yelchin's mother works as a figure skating choreographer and his father as a figure skating coach, having been Sasha Cohen's first trainer. Yelchin's uncle is the painter Eugene Yelchin.
Yelchin has stated that he "wasn't very good" at figure skating, his parents' profession. He once played in a punk band named The Hammerheads, though the group has since disbanded. He enjoys playing the guitar, having said that it gives him "a lot of fulfillment", and is a fan of acoustic blues music. Yelchin attended the Sherman Oaks Center for Enriched Studies, in Tarzana, Los Angeles, California, and enrolled at the University of Southern California in the fall of 2007 to study film. As of 2009, he lives in Burbank Hills, located in the city of Burbank.
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